


But I Can Float Your Boat

by Jonaira



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Awkward Boners, Bachelorette Party, Bad Decisions, Chaos, Crack, Drunken Shenanigans, F/M, Fluff, Graduation, Humor, M/M, Percy Being an Idiot, Percy is a Dork, Post-Graduation, Ridiculous, Romance, Shirtless, Stripper AU, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2020-09-27 02:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20400256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jonaira/pseuds/Jonaira
Summary: In which Annabeth is probably the most unwilling receiver of a lap dance in history.Any sexiness encountered is unintentional, coincidental and bears no resemblance to sexiness real or imaginary.Percy Jackson stripper!AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Timbaland's Way I Are, because ya boi gonna strip, though the getting the tip part is ???

Hazel shot multiple panicky looks over her shoulder at Annabeth as Thalia and Piper half-dragged half-carried her over the threshold of Mt. Olympus Club: Home of the Real Greek gods !™

Annabeth thought the look of utter betrayal that crossed Hazel's face when she did nothing to save her was slightly unfair; she was being frogmarched into the club herself by Nico, who for a skeleton lookalike, was surprisingly strong.

The huge bouncer, _Tyson _read his name tag, merely looked amused. Annabeth figured that futile resistance was quite the opposite of what he usually had to deal with, given the rave (and frankly, raving) reviews the place had got.

She'd done her research alright, Hazel's hen party before she did anything naughtier with Frank than hold his hand- which is to say, before they got married and were faced with the dilemma of the wedding bed for utter lack of prior experience- was supposed to be perfect. The only thing Annabeth hadn't counted on was being bodily dragged along to the strip club for the second part of the planned celebration itself.

She'd expected to be let off after the first part of their evening at a bar she'd picked out for their little group to get nice and drunk. Drunk Thalia and Drunk Piper and Drunk Nico didn't think so however, as a result of which Not Quite Drunk Enough Hazel (could one ever be ?) and Painfully Sober Annabeth were being sat down right besides the stage, which extended all the way into the middle of the room. 

Hazel seemed to have gotten over her betrayal though as she clutched at Annabeth's elbow, muttering, "I don't know what's more mortifying, having some strange man give me a lap dance while my brother watches, or having to watch as my brother gets the lap dance instead."

Nico, drunk as a skunk, threw his arm around Hazel's shoulder and swore in front of the whole club that the lap of his very-soon-to-be married sister would not remain un-danced upon by atleast half of the employees by the end of the evening, to much cheering from the other patrons. Annabeth was strongly reminded why she was a socially tactless architect who didn't go out much. Interaction over the years with her decidedly odd group of friends had sort of ruined _normal_ people for her.

She was spared from answering as she flailed and spasmodically tried to hold on to her purse, before realising that it was just Thalia and Piper who had made a grab for Annabeth's purse, busily pooling all the change the group collectively had onto their table, giggling in a frankly alarming manner all the while.

Thalia had been her senior in college and had taken a very lost Annabeth under her rebel, edgy, punk wing, showing her how a scholarship student like her could make the most of her limited resources and other important life skills like the appreciation of 80's punk music. Honestly, she loved Thalia like a sister, but the memories of Thalia's own bachelorette party before she married Luke still prevented Annabeth from being able to look at Olives without the beginnings of a friendly migraine. Which was sad, because she really loved olives.

Piper and Hazel had been her junior roommates and in a reversal of tradition, had taken a still-somewhat-socially-awkward Annabeth under _their_ wing(s) which was a tad ironic given that _her_ nickname was Night Owl. With Hazel came Nico, her overprotective but well-meaning half brother, who dressed and brooded like some long lost cousin of Thalia's, and Frank, Hazel's cinnamon roll of a boyfriend and now fiancée.

The club owner, a statesque lady by the name Reyna now vaulted onto stage to hysterical cheering, and started listing the rules.

Annabeth cowered in her seat and tried her best to look like she didn't know her friends, as they whooped and cheered while Reyna listed the Do's and Don'ts, yelling all the while about them being _high rollers _and _whales_ while brandishing their handfuls of small denomination dollars.

Annabeth also had to combat the weirdest urge to pull Reyna down to her mouth and bite her full lower lip. Maybe she'd knocked her head somewhere on the way here.

Reyna smirked , throwing a wink at Piper as she finished off the last rule, "And remember ladies, _No Touching."_


	2. Chapter 2

** _3 years ago_ **

Percy's stripping career started the way all of our stripping careers do- on the night after his final paper of his final exams of his final year of college. 

Ours end there. 

His took off.

* * *

Percy himself didn't have much recollection of the events of the previous night, having spent it in an alcohol induced haze so glorious that he wakes up with no recollection as to how he landed up in a bathtub on the roof of his dorm building, accompanied by two thirty gallon tanks from the aquarium, one of which held Paul the blowfish (who he had fondly named after his stepdad in his sophomore year) and the other which was worryingly empty of its usual occupant. That what had woken him up also happened to be the tank's usual occupant wasn't very comforting either. Ella the octopus was perched on his chest, gently patting his face with two of her tentacles while eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos stuck in his hair with the rest of her appendages. Noticing him awake, she tries to feed him some as well. 

"I don't think that's good for you," he tells her. The octopus might have shrugged, non-existent shoulders not a limitation. He gently picks her up and puts her back in the tank, dunking his head under the briny water a few times for good measure. Turned out, octopus water was a powerful hangover cure.

By some miracle, he still has his phone on him. By an even greater miracle, it still has charge. He's about to dial Grover and Tyson for help getting the tanks back to the marine bio lab when Grover's name shows up on his caller ID. It's like this weird sixth sense/empathy link Grover and he share - the guy always seemed to know when he's in trouble and invariably showed up with the cavalry, which consisted solely and sufficiently of Tyson.

"Have you seen it yet ?!" Is the first thing Grover says to him, voice tinny from the all the octopus water in Percy's ear.

"Uh, what ? Listen man I'm on the roof of the dorm building with Ella and Paul-"

"So  _ that's _ where they are ! Chiron and the rest of the department were pretty worried somebody had tried to turn Paul into sashimi again, it wouldn't be the first time-"

"Yeah, Grover listen, get Tyson and help me move them down to the lab. And get me a shirt too would you ?" Percy's eyes the octopus-sucker shaped hickeys Ella had left on his bare chest. Those would be a little difficult to explain.

* * *

Turns out, kidnapping marine life and stealing a bathtub aren't the craziest things that happened last night, so campus security is too busy dealing with other hungover and amnesic students to bother with three guys moving two fish tanks to the marine bio lab. 

"How'd you even get them up there ?" Grover puffs, stumbling under the weight of Paul's tank. Paul puffed up in affront. 

"Dunno," Percy grunted from the other end of the sloshing tank. "Think I heard somebody say something about making calamari out of Ella and trying to sell Paul to McD's as  _ Fillet-o-Fugu _ , and I panicked."

Tyson clutched Ella's tank closer to him in alarm. The octopus reached out a few tentacles and gave him a kiss.

"Where did the bathtub come from ?" Grover wondered. Percy shrugged. For all he knew, it could have been one of the art installations left over from the department's final showcase earlier that month. Come to think of it, the tub had even looked like the one from Rachel's apartment. Nobody else he knew had a gold rimmed, clawfoot cast iron tub after all.

They collapse in a heap after the sea fauna is safely back in the lab. Ella waves bye-bye mournfully. 

"So did you watch it ?" Grover asks him again. 

"Watch what ?" The trend of Percy spending the morning confused continued.

Grover pulled out his phone and started a video. Uploaded by  _ StollYourHearts _ just eleven hours ago, it already had close to twenty thousand likes. The quality was shit, but Percy recognised the low front of the boy's dorm building in the background. A small, incredibly chaotic crowd is doing what looks like a war dance around a streetlight. He recognised most of the chanting, stomping people as fellow Marine Bio majors, and Beckendorf from Engineering. There are a few others he knows by face if not name, and a handful of guys from the varsity swim team, but overall there weren't more than twenty people gathered. He figures that these were all those who had been liberated from finals yesterday like him.

The audio isn't great either, but Percy can vaguely make out cheering. "Is that...are they saying  _ All Hail the Supreme Lord of the Bathroom _ ?"

"Ooh it gets worse," Grover tells him grimly.

A figure breaks away from the main body of the crowd, and makes his way to the center of the circle, just inside the circle of light thrown by the street light. Percy's heart jumps into his throat.

"My adoring subjects !" Past Percy cried out on screen. "Clarisse the Bane of floor 3 has been vanquished !" The crowd roared, while a lone distinctly disgruntled voice yelled out, "Fuck you Jackson !"

"You'd have to catch me first !" He called out to the voice. Another figure breaks through the throng, burly and female and charges towards him with an honest to god  _ cattle prod. _ The crowd goes  _ wild _ , chanting intensifying as they watch Clarisse chase Percy round and round the street lamp. At one point she actually catches him by the back of his shirt, and Present Percy watching the video feels his ass clench in alarm, despite knowing the major spoilers of being perfectly fine the next morning. He watched as he wriggles out of his shirt in one fell swoop, leaving her screaming in frustration while the others practically piss themselves laughing. Clarisse throws the offending garment into the air, where it came to hang from the light of the streetlamp, swinging and making the light flutter like a strobe. Meanwhile, Percy had started to climb the lamppost in his bid to escape her clutches. 

Eleven hours later now, he watched in fascination just as everyone in the video had. He couldn't believe that was him. Past, Drunk and Very Out of Control Percy practically shot up the pole, so fast that Clarisse couldn't even reach a foot of his to grab and yank towards her, sliding down everytime she tried to follow him up. 

Percy had reached the top of the pole now, and appeared to be clinging on for dear life, inexplicably trying to reach for his shirt, even though there was no way he could have put it back on.

"Hey Jackson, show us your moves !" somebody calls from below, very close to the camera. It sounded like Travis. Someone else wolf whistles and laughter ripples through the crowd. He can see Beckendorf trying to clear people away from the pole, attempting to talk Clarisse into sanity, bless his mathematical soul. "Percy, get down now, you'll break your neck, "Beckendorf called up. 

Present and Regretting Everything Percy let out a relieved sigh. As far as embarrassing videos went, it wasn't terrible. He'd not be unable to show it to his mom, which had been his ultimate test of appropriateness of action all his life.

Percy looked up at Grover to tell him that, except his friend is still staring transfixed at the screen, looking a tad dazed. 

Percy turned his attention back to the screen and then recoiled in shock.

Past Percy was not getting down. In fact, getting down was the last thing he seemed to be doing. Percy was reaching for his shirt again, except this time he was only holding onto the pole with his legs locked around it, while bending backwards from the waist to try and snag the errant item of clothing. The pole sways a bit and Beckendorf yelps and clutches the base, steadying it. "Percy get down ! A sea cucumber will be more functional than you if you fall from that height !"He yelled up. 

"But I'm cold !" Percy called down, now changing positions, pulling himself onto the horizontal bar and then flipping upside down, hanging onto it with his knees over the bar, playground style. " _ Holy fuck _ ," says the cameraman reverently and zooms in, video shaking as he walked closer. People had stopped laughing and were now actually quietening down, watching the mad spectacle unfold before them. "Go on Perce, show us dem stripper moves!" some girl calls. 

"Yeah, he's lost his shirt already," somebody else laughs. Percy on the pole seemed completely oblivious to the catcalling taking place below him. He'd moved back to the main vertical pole, much to poor Beckendorf's relief. "That's right Perce, come down now, nice and easy does it," he called encouragingly, the way you'd coax a rabid bunny into eating a carrot. 

Present Percy chances a look away from the screen, to find Grover chewing his shirt collar nervously and Tyson petting a stray cat that was winding itself around his legs. Onscreen, his actions are getting more and more stripclub worthy. Apparently, Percy had given up on reaching his shirt with his hands. He now clutched the pole with both hands, and started straightening out his body perpendicular to the ground, his foot nearly reaching his shirt but falling just a few inches short. The pole creaks ominously, and Silena darts out to help Beckendorf steady the thing. 

"What the fuck. What the  _ fuck _ ." muttered Travis, zooming in in the sweat beading on Charles' face and then cutting to Percy's, who's sticking out his tongue in concentration as he tries to hook the shirt onto his foot without having a direct line of sight. 

There were gasps from the crowd which had fallen completely silent now. " _ Fuck _ that's hot," Travis curses. 

The camera briefly turned to his brother Connor, who waggles his eyebrows, grins crookedly and says, "Boyo's got serious talent. Wanna make a bet he'll be on a stage somewhere, sometime soon ?" 

Nobody in their right mind made bets with the Stoll brothers, apparently including each other, because with just a scoff from Travis the camera pans back to Percy, who'd given up on reaching the shirt in anyway from the vertical pole and who had now performed some complicated shimmy twisty twirl around the pole and had stood up, wobbling madly on the very top of the pole, one foot ahead on the horizontal bar. 

"How the fuck is he doing this  _ drunk _ ?!" Travis demanded of the camera. Someone screams then, and both Charles and Silena cry out in alarm- the pole had started pulling out of the ground. Percy wobbled his way quickly to the middle of the horizontal bar, and then all hell breaks loose all at once as Silena and Charles dive clear out of the path of the falling pole, Percy makes a jump to rival that of Willy the orca, completely misses grabbing his shirt off the end of the light but perfectly grabs one of the ledges of the dorm building.

The streetlight hits the ground in shower of sparks and the shirt which is still draped over the bulb catches fire, there's general hysteria but the camera unerringly seeks Percy even in the semi dark, only to catch the end of him hauling himself up over the roof of the building having clambered up a pipe. 

The video ends with Charles Beckendorf furiously beating out the minor fire with his  _ own _ shirt, and then turning around, advancing menacingly on Travis Stoll who begins to run away with a " _ shitshitshit _ " just before the camera cuts off.

Percy clutches his head in horror. "They wont let me walk for graduation. They're gonna cut my entire security deposit. Four years of nothing but my best behavior, and on the last night, the  _ very _ last night, it's all gone." He said hoarsely. 

"I'm going to be  _ arrested _ ," he says faintly. 

"Oh my god my mother is going to  _ disown _ me," he wailed. 

"Where were you in all of this ?" Percy asked Grover in disbelief. Grover turned a fetching shade of red. "Juniper needed some help packing," he mumbled. 

"Oh so that's what they're calling it now," he tells Grover sarcastically. 

"Hey ! You know how Tyson feels about drinking and how I feel about hangovers. We figured you'd be ok with Beckendorf to cut you off if you went too far. You've never ever gotten so drunk before."

Percy rubbed his eyes tiredly. "You figured Beckendorf would have eyes for anyone but Silena on the last night they had together before leaving for an early internship at MIT and Milan respectively ?"

Grover shrugged sheepishly. "He called me after, told me where to look for you and said you were okay, just passed out in the tub. I don't know at what point did you kidnap the fish though."

Percy slumped against the wall. The campus police was probably out looking for  _ him _ at this point. "I need to get that video taken down," he swore. "It's bad enough that probably all of the underclassmen have seen it, but I can't let it reach the professor's too. Fuck I'm going to be expelled just before I get my degree," he says, nauseous. 

Percy pulled up Travis' contact. The guy answered on first ring.

"Travis-"

"We've been expecting your call," Travis tells him smoothly, and not at all sounding like the mafia.

"What?" 

"You're calling about your video from last night, aren't you Percy ? Did you know it's the most viewed video we've ever had on our channel, with the fastest like rate too ? We've gained about a thousand new subscribers overnight."

Percy grits his teeth."That's great Travis. How much do I have to pay for you to take it down immediately ?"

"Perce, hey, we get it man. Shit happened. We'll take it down asap, no cost."

Percy blinked. "What." he repeated.

"Dude, we don't wanna get you or Charlie or Silena into trouble. Connor and I were just about to do that anyway when you called. When we put it up last night we thought it would barely get a few hundred hits, just people who were actually there or friends of those who saw it happen first hand y'know ? Connor and I had no idea it would blow up so quickly."

"I don't understand, you just said it was your most watched video. You've got a bunch of new subscribers. What's the catch ?" Percy asked suspicious, which was his default mode when it came to dealings with the Stolls, and especially since he couldn't see their faces.

"Percy Jackson,  _ Supreme Lord of the Bathroom _ , what sort of scoundrels do you take us for ?!" Connor yelled down the line mock-affronted.

"The grade A kind," Percy muttered but Travis was talking again. "Dude listen. We run a prank channel. This was hilarious and awe-inspiring and we will sing of your escapades to our children and grandkids until their first words are  _ All Hail Percy Jackson Supreme Lord of the Bathroom _ . But this wasn't a prank, and even if it was it could really get you guys into serious shit. Vandalism charges, misconduct, etcetera," Travis tells him in all seriousness. Atleast, Percy thought it was seriousness; he'd never heard that sentiment from the boy in four years of knowing him, so Percy couldn't be sure.

"So you're actually taking it down ?" Percy checked once again, mistrustful.

"Check it out." Connor said smugly. Sure enough, when he tried to replay the video on Gover's phone, it showed a blank grey screen with the  _ Deleted by Uploader _ message.

Percy shot a look at Grover, who grinned and gave him a double thumbs up.

"You guys," Percy choked out, "thank you so much." His eyes felt watery. Must've been the Cheeto dust raining down from his hair.

"Don't mention it Jackson. You got us out of that tight spot with Lou Ellen and the rec room committee back in my freshman year, remember ? This barely measures up to that." Travis tells him breezily.

Percy just sniffs, overcome with mushy emotions.

"Also, don't worry about the busted streetlight and any CCTV cameras which could've got footage of that adventure. We got those fixed." Connor calls down the line.

"How d'you mean ?" Percy asked, beginning to truly think this was all one extended hallucination trip.

"Means get your tight pole dancing ass over to the dorms and look for the busted light, which you won't find because it isn't busted anymore. And all cameras in the vicinity just show a loop of drunk partiers stumbling by." The good-natured smugness in Travis' voice was almost a physical thing.

"Travis and Connor Stoll, I will offer up my first born child to you," Percy tells them fervently.

"No thanks, kids aren't our speed, but um, Perce, there is one teensy tiny thing though." Travis says, sounding a little shifty for the first time.

"Oh god I take that back, I'm not even giving you guys the kid's first used diaper," Percy tells them.

"No no, it's nothing bad. Infact, it's kind of flattering even." Connor cuts in.

"You see-"

"Its like six degrees of Kevin Bacon-"

"And the world's a small place so-"

"The video made its way to the big leagues of that sort of thing-"

"Hold on," Percy interrupted their completion of each other's sentences. "What do you mean big leagues for  _ that sort of thing _ ?"

"Basically, some bigshot producer saw it, and contacted us about the guy working that pole like no man's business."

"Oh god, you're saying a porn production house is interested in me ?" Percy asks a little faintly.

"No no no no!" they chimed. "Mr. D isn't a  _ porn _ producer." Travis tells him sincerely. His choice of word to emphasize doesn't reassure Percy that the reality is much better. 

"Actually," Connor chimes in, "we aren't really sure  _ what _ exactly it is that he does.'

"But he wanted to get in touch with you and offer you a job, said you were a natural. We told him we were your agents." Connor tells him apologetically. "Hope you don't mind."

"A natural at what ?" Percy asked with a mounting sense of doom.

"Dude, pole dancing of course!" Travis tells him happily.

After a few seconds pass without any reply from Percy, Travis checked if he was still on the line. "Hey man, you still with us ?"

"Are you guys recording this call ?" Percy asked.

"Er, why would we record this call ?" Connor asks, baffled.

"Because this is obviously some kind of practical joke, isn't it ?" Percy grumbled into the phone.

"What ?! No, we are more serious than the two of us have ever been combined in our entire existence. Dude this guy really wants to meet you. More specifically, he wants to audition you for this club of his, he claims. Wouldn't give details when we asked, but he did say he'd explain everything to you if you guys met face to face."

Percy massaged his temples. It wasn't very effective one handed. "Do you guys have any idea how close you've come to being my actual pimps ?"

"Naww, we wouldn't dream of taking a cut if you said yes." Connor told him cheerfully. "So are you gonna do it ? Say yes ?" Travis asked in that tone that every gossip loving auntie ever had perfected.

"I'll talk to you guys later." Percy groaned and cut the call.

Grover and Tyson were looking at him expectantly. 

"What ? Are you two also gonna ask me if I'm actually going to agree to meeting some shady guy who probably haunts Craigslist and rips up dudes like me in his free time ?" He looked at them incredulously. 

Tyson looked thoughtful. "He couldn't rip you up if I were around." 

"Heeeey!" Grover brayed. "I'd come along too! There's no way we'd let you go to meet that guy alone!"

Percy stared at them for a few seconds, seriously questioning if he had, indeed woken up from the previous night and this wasn't just a very strange dream. " _ Why _ would you even think I'm gonna go meet him ? What is it about  _ me _ that screams  _ exotic dancer _ to you ?"

"Percy," Grover told him in all seriousness,"I've known you since our first day here. You saved me from Nancy Bobofit and bought me lunch. I'd be the last person to judge if you told me you secretly used to go out and perform pole dancing on the side. Because what you did on that pole, drunk, was not something that should be kept hidden from the world."


	3. Chapter 3

Since Percy's Better Judgement had taken permanent leave of absence, they get to find out first hand that the  _ "D" _ in Mr. D did not, infact, stand for  _ dick _ , even if it  _ did _ better summarize Dionysus' personality. It wasn't something Percy had planned on finding out mid-morning and still half hungover.

"What, is he your agent too ?" Mr. D jerked his chin at Grover who stood in the doorway looking like a blushing bride.

"No he's my groupie," Percy tells the guy on reflex, because everything about the man yells  _ drunk in the job at 11 am. _

Dionysus shrugged like that sounded totally legit while Grover sputtered in the background. 

Mr.D spared Grover another look. "What is he trying to do ? Is that beatboxing, is he trying to beatbox ? Can you do a decent throat base ? Tuvan throat singing maybe ? A rousing rendition of Yuve Yuve Yu ? I love the Hu! No ? Nothing ? Because we have a novelty show night where we let the crowd throw peanuts and boo the worst acts off stage and your beatboxing, Groupie, could make it rain nuts like an elephant's wet dream. Would you like to sign up ?" He helpfully pushed a pad of paper and pen towards Grover, who's sputtering now resembled that of a reluctant motorboat.

Mr.D turned his roving, slightly bloodshot eye upon Tyson.

"Does the walking muscle have a name ?"

"Tyson," said Tyson.

" _ Nunya _ ," grits out Percy.

"Mike!" exclaimed Mr.D happily. "Mike Tyson, gimme the old one-two, c'mon bust out a hook !"

Tyson did all of the above and threw in a spinning kick for good measure.

"That's MMA, but you're hired."

Things were getting way out of control way too fast. Grover had a possible legume gathering gig, Tyson was being threatened by gainful employment fresh out of college, this would not do. 

"Hired as what ?!" Percy butts in.

"You're pretty Peter Johnson, but there's not a lot going on up there is it ?" He prodded his head where typically Frankenstein's monster's screws would protrude. "Try Hermes Multivitamins, they do wonders for your cognitive powers. We throw in a free box with every employee contract we sign. Why Mikey here is going to bounce for us of course! We try to ensure a 1:1 ratio of dancers to bouncers here."

Tyson looks happy enough, accepting the  _ So You Think You Can Bounce _ flyer Mr D proffers him off the pile on his desk. 

"Argus! Teach our boy Mike here everything he's to know about bouncing."

A big surfer dude toting a beach ball shows up. He's covered in so many tattoos of eyes (Percy spots one he's sure is the Eye of Sauron) that he looks like a walking shop of evil eye warding off charms.

Percy tries to stop Tyson from signing away his soul to a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and bermuda shorts at 11 am on a Tuesday.

"Listen, this was all one big misunderstanding. I already have a job lined up, no matter what line the Stolls fed you. I'm having them fired as my agents today itself. Wouldn't want to give small business owners such as yourself false hopes." Percy tells him.

" _ Small _ business owners," Mr.D gaped at Percy in affronted astonishment. He appeared to write it off as Perry Johansson's general airheadedness. Although Percy didn't miss the way Dionysus began massaging a dolphin stress squeezy for good measure though.

Percy's plan to antagonize the guy into giving up on him and deleting any footage he may have downloaded of Percy's antics on the street lamp seemed to be working !

"You know, our hours like our dancers are flexible.  _ Extremely _ flexible." He narrowed his eyes at Percy.

Strike that, Percy's plan was failing. As a wise woman once said, Percy recalled desperately, try the direct approach,  _ Let them eat cake _ .

No wait, that wasn't quite right. 

_ No means no _ . Yes, that's better. (He's still too hungover for this, and Percy knew deep within his liver of livers, that this was his hepatobilliary system's way of telling him to go emulsify himself)

"I told you, I'm. Not. Interested." Percy growled. "And I want any copy you have of that video deleted."

Dionysus raised an eyebrow behind his crooked sunglasses. It's the most effective and simultaneously dismissive  _ Or what ?  _ Mr. D could have told him. Percy wanted to snatch the damn shades off his head and wear them himself because  _ wow, _ what a time for his headache to throw itself a gender reveal party.

He pushed a cheque to Percy across the desk. "Did I mention your summer package ? Complete with a signing bonus. And dental."

"Hey ! Dental sounds good !" Grover piped up from the back. Percy briefly wondered whose side, exactly, was Grover on.

He was about to shove the cheque right back at Mr. D when Percy caught sight of the number of zeroes on there, and was convinced that his dyslexia was acting up.

He tapped the outrageous figure. "I think you need to let go whoever does your accounts because there's no way they'd reasonably allow you to sign somebody new for  _ that _ amount."

Mr. D snorted and slurped at his diet coke. "I do the accounts here, Paul Jackoff, and that amount includes you covering the expenses for your own stage costumes. We take the creative freedom of our dancers very seriously."

"And what if I decide the entirety of my costume to be nothing but the blue speedo my mother bought me for my seventeenth birthday, hmm ?"

"You get your mother to do your mankini shopping ?"

"Answer the question !" Percy snapped, working on getting the taste of his own foot out of his mouth. It had been on discount, and Sally had the pathological inability to resist a good bargain.

Mr. D huffed a put-upon sigh. "Listen, I know you aren't the brightest spot on the sun, but in case you hadn't noticed, this is a strip club. An eventual paucity of clothing is sort of the point."

"And I get to pick my own hours, and quit when summer ends and I start my regular day job."

"Technically, this would be your night job. And you wouldn't have to quit. We'd just keep you on unpaid retainer until you came back next summer."

"Why the hell would I return next summer ?" Percy had never been this offended in his life.

Mr. D waggled his eyebrows at Percy. "Because once you go bare, you never go back.  _ Bareback _ , though, now that's a whole 'nother ball game."

Percy scoffed. "That's bullshit."

"And yet," Mr.D smiled smarmily at him, "wasn't it only last night that you did your first strip show of sorts, and today you sit here in my parlour."

Percy opened his mouth to shoot down that ridiculous logic, and then shut his mouth.

Something miniscule (and probably hopelessly lost in the wrong aisle) on Dionysus's face shifted. His jowls took on an almost sympathetic tilt. "Tell you what, Piotr Jamestown. You give this a shot and go down in flames, I'll fire you myself. Along with deleting all videographic evidence of what I'm considering to be your audition tape from last night."

That's the single, nicest backhanded reassurance to not blackmail him Percy has ever recieved.

To his horror, on looking inwards upon what were the sad remnants of his rationality, Percy discovered he was actually, seriously considering the offer.

Because while his dad  _ had _ promised him a year of internship at his marine research firm, the season for tagging and tracking sharks, beluga whales, and all the other marine animals under study wouldn't actually start until September. Plus, even though it was a paid internship, Percy had insisted that just because he was Poseidon's son didn't mean he'd get paid more than any other regular fresh graduate. He'd been wanting to work with his dad since  _ forever _ now, but it wasn't like he'd had  _ plans _ before the start of the internship. Unless attempting to achieve oneness with the couch in his little apartment up at Stony Brook, blissful in his boxers and naught else, eating blue popcorn while catching up on Suits constituted  _ plans _ . 

They did. But he could  _ still _ do all of that while also...getting paid to take his clothes off.

His mother would probably kill him for selling his body to the night. But his unpaid students loans would just resurrect Percy to slowly finish the job themselves with bouncy-castle levels of interest rate inflation.

* * *

"What the fuck just happened ?" Percy demanded of the universe as he walked out of there a half hour later, free of the weight of that pesky entity he'd once upon a time called his soul. 

Tyson hummed contentedly and tucked an origami flower he'd made from a  _ So You Think You Can Bounce _ poster behind Percy's ear.

"I can't believe you called me your groupie," Grover tells him, looking hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Literally nobody:  
Me: Percy in a thong tho!!!


End file.
